Chapter VII: Paragraphs (1)

Definition.

So far we have been dealing with whole compositions; we now take up the study of paragraphs, sentences, and words. A paragraph in many respects resembles a whole composition. It may be narrative, descriptive, expositive, or argumentative. It must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. It is constructed with regard to Unity, Mass, and Coherence. And as a whole composition treats a single theme, so a paragraph treats one division of a theme. It has been defined as a composition in miniature. A paragraph is a sentence or a group of sentences serving a single purpose in the development of a theme. The purpose may be simply to announce the theme-subject, to make a conclusion, to indicate a transition; but in the great majority of cases its purpose is to treat a single topic. So true is this that many authors, with good reason, define a paragraph as a group of sentences treating a single topic.

Long and Short Paragraphs.

Nobody would have trouble in telling where on a page a paragraph began and where it ended. The indention at the beginning, and usually the incomplete line at the end, mark its visible limits. Unfortunately there is no specified length after which the writer is to make a break in the lines and begin a new paragraph. The length of a paragraph depends on something deeper than appearances; as the topic requires a lengthy or but a short treatment, as the paragraph may be a long summary or a short transition, the length of a paragraph varies. Yet there is one circumstance which should counsel an author to keep his paragraphs within certain bounds: he should always have regard for his readers. Readers shirk heavy labor. If a book or an article looks hard, it is passed by; if it looks easy, it is read. If the paragraphs be long and the page solid, the composition looks difficult; if the paragraphs be short and the page broken, the piece looks easy. This fact should advise a writer to make the page attractive by using short paragraphs; provided, and the provision is important, he can so make real paragraphs, divisions of composition that fully treat one topic. These divisions may in reality be but one sentence, and they may just as unquestionably be two pages of hard reading.

Successive paragraphs, each more than a page of ordinary print in length, repel as too hard; and a series of paragraphs of less than a quarter of a page impresses a reader as scrappy, and the work seems to lack the authority of complete treatment. An author will serve his readers and himself best by so subdividing his subject that the paragraphs are within these limits.

The following paragraph is much too long and can with no difficulty be subdivided. The paragraphs in the next group are too short, and they are incomplete.

"Keating rode up now, and the transaction became more
complicated. It ended in the purchase of the horse by Bryce
for a hundred and twenty, to be paid on the delivery of
Wildfire, safe and sound, at the Batherley stables. It did
occur to Dunsey that it might be wise for him to give up the
day's hunting, proceed at once to Batherley, and, having
waited for Bryce's return, hire a horse to carry him home
with the money in his pocket. But the inclination for a run,
encouraged by confidence in his luck, and by a draught of
brandy from his pocket-pistol at the conclusion of the
bargain, was not easy to overcome, especially with a horse
under him that would take the fences to the admiration of
the field. Dunstan, however, took one fence too many, and
got his horse pierced with a hedge-stake. His own
ill-favored person, which was quite unmarketable, escaped
without injury; but poor Wildfire, unconscious of his price,
turned on his flank, and painfully panted his last. It
happened that Dunstan, a short time before, having had to
get down to arrange his stirrup, had muttered a good many
curses at this interruption, which had thrown him in the
rear of the hunt near the moment of glory, and under this
exasperation had taken the fences more blindly. He would
soon have been up with the hounds again, when the fatal
accident happened; and hence he was between eager riders in
advance, not troubling themselves about what happened behind
them, and far-off stragglers, who were as likely as not to
pass quite aloof from the line of road in which Wildfire had
fallen. Dunstan, whose nature it was to care more for
immediate annoyances than for remote consequences, no sooner
recovered his legs, and saw that it was all over with
Wildfire, than he felt a satisfaction at the absence of
witnesses to a position which no swaggering could make
enviable. Reinforcing himself, after his shake, with a
little brandy and much swearing, he walked as fast as he
could to a coppice on his right hand, through which it
occurred to him that he could make his way to Batherley
without danger of encountering any member of the hunt. His
first intention was to hire a horse there and ride home
forthwith, for to walk many miles without a gun in his hand,
and along an ordinary road, was as much out of the question
to him as to other spirited young men of his kind. He did
not much mind about taking the bad news to Godfrey, for he
had to offer him at the same time the resource of Marner's
money; and if Godfrey kicked, as he always did, at the
notion of making a fresh debt, from which he himself got the
smallest share of advantage, why, he wouldn't kick long:
Dunstan felt sure he could worry Godfrey into anything. The
idea of Marner's money kept growing in vividness, now the
want of it had become immediate; the prospect of having to
make his appearance with the muddy boots of a pedestrian at
Batherley, and to encounter the grinning queries of
stablemen, stood unpleasantly in the way of his impatience
to be back at Raveloe and carry out his felicitous plan; and
a casual visitation of his waistcoat-pocket, as he was
ruminating, awakened his memory to the fact that the two or
three small coins his fore-finger encountered there were of
too pale a color to cover that small debt, without payment
of which the stable-keeper had declared he would never do
any more business with Dunsey Cass. After all, according to
the direction in which the run had brought him, he was not
so very much farther from home than he was from Batherley;
but Dunsey, not being remarkable for clearness of head, was
only led to this conclusion by the gradual perception that
there were other reasons for choosing the unprecedented
course of walking home. It was now nearly four o'clock, and
a mist was gathering: the sooner he got into the road the
better. He remembered having crossed the road and seen the
finger-post only a little while before Wildfire broke down;
so, buttoning his coat, twisting the lash of his
hunting-whip compactly round the handle, and rapping the
tops of his boots with a self-possessed air, as if to assure
himself that he was not at all taken by surprise, he set off
with the sense that he was undertaking a remarkable feat of
bodily exertion, which somehow, and at some time, he should
be able to dress up and magnify to the admiration of a
select circle at the Rainbow. When a young gentleman like
Dunsey is reduced to so exceptional a mode of locomotion as
walking, a whip in his hand is a desirable corrective to a
too bewildering dreamy sense of unwontedness in his
position; and Dunstan, as he went along through the
gathering mist, was always rapping his whip somewhere. It
was Godfrey's whip, which he had chosen to take without
leave because it had a gold handle; of course no one could
see, when Dunstan held it, that the name _Godfrey Cass_ was
cut in deep letters on that gold handle--they could only see
that it was a very handsome whip. Dunsey was not without
fear that he might meet some acquaintance in whose eyes he
would cut a pitiable figure, for mist is no screen when
people get close to each other; but when he at last found
himself in the well-known Raveloe lanes without having met a
soul, he silently remarked that that was part of his usual
good luck. But now the mist, helped by the evening darkness,
was more of a screen than he desired, for it hid the ruts
into which his feet were liable to slip--hid everything, so
that he had to guide his steps by dragging his whip along
the low bushes in advance of the hedgerow. He must soon, he
thought, be getting near the opening at the Stone-pits: he
should find it out by the break in the hedgerow. He found it
out, however, by another circumstance which he had not
expected--namely, by certain gleams of light, which he
presently guessed to proceed from Silas Marner's cottage.
That cottage and the money hidden within it had been in his
mind continually during his walk, and he had been imagining
ways of cajoling and tempting the weaver to part with the
immediate possession of his money for the sake of receiving
interest. Dunstan felt as if there must be a little
frightening added to the cajolery, for his own arithmetical
convictions were not clear enough to afford him any forcible
demonstration as to the advantages of interest; and as for
security, he regarded it vaguely as a means of cheating a
man by making him believe that he would be paid. Altogether,
the operation on the miser's mind was a task that Godfrey
would be sure to hand over to his more daring and cunning
brother: Dunstan had made up his mind to that; and by the
time he saw the light gleaming through the chinks of
Marner's shutters, the idea of a dialogue with the weaver
had become so familiar to him, that it occurred to him as
quite a natural thing to make the acquaintance forthwith.
There might be several conveniences attending this course:
the weaver had possibly got a lantern, and Dunstan was tired
of feeling his way. He was still nearly three quarters of a
mile from home, and the lane was becoming unpleasantly
slippery, for the mist was passing into rain. He turned up
the bank, not without some fear lest he might miss the right
way, since he was not certain whether the light were in
front or on the side of the cottage. But he felt the ground
before him cautiously with his whip-handle, and at last
arrived safely at the door. He knocked loudly, rather
enjoying the idea that the old fellow would be frightened at
the sudden noise. He heard no movement in reply: all was
silence in the cottage. Was the weaver gone to bed, then? If
so, why had he left a light? That was a strange
forgetfulness in a miser. Dunstan knocked still more loudly,
and, without pausing for a reply, pushed his fingers through
the latch-hole, intending to shake the door and pull the
latch-string up and down, not doubting that the door was
fastened. But, to his surprise, at this double motion the
door opened, and he found himself in front of a bright fire,
which lit up every corner of the cottage--the bed, the loom,
the three chairs, and the table--and showed him that Marner
was not there."[23]

"The country, all white, lit up by the fire, shone like a
cloth of silver tinted with red.

"A bell, far off, began to toll.

"The old 'Sauvage' remained standing before her ruined
dwelling, armed with her gun, her son's gun, for fear lest
one of those men might escape.

"When she saw that it was ended, she threw her weapon into
the brasier. A loud report rang back.

"People were coming, the peasants, the Prussians.

"They found the woman seated on the trunk of a tree, calm
and satisfied.

"A German officer, who spoke French like a son of France,
demanded of her:--

"'Where are your soldiers?'

"She extended her thin arm towards the red heap of fire
which was gradually going out, and she answered with a
strong voice:--

"'There!'

"They crowded round her. The Prussian asked:--

"'How did it take fire?'

"She said:--

"'It was I who set it on fire.'"[24]

Topic Sentence.

Paragraphs are developments of a definite topic; and this topic is generally announced at the beginning of the paragraph. In isolated paragraphs, paragraphs that are indeed compositions in miniature, the topic-sentence is the first sentence. The reader is then advised of the subject of the discussion; and as sentence after sentence passes him, he can relate it to the topic, and the thought is a cumulative whole. If the subject be not announced, the individual sentences must be held in mind until the reader catches the drift of the discussion, or the author at last presents the topic.

Below are four paragraphs, from different forms of discourse, all having the topic-sentence at the beginning.

"_But success or defeat was a minor matter to them, who had
only thought for the safety of those they loved._ Amelia, at
the news of the victory, became still more agitated even
than before. She was for going that moment to the army. She
besought her brother with tears to conduct her thither. Her
doubts and terrors reached their paroxysm; and the poor
girl, who for many hours had been plunged into stupor, raved
and ran hither and thither in hysteric insanity,--a piteous
sight. No man writhing in pain in the hard-fought field
fifteen miles off, where lay, after their struggles, so many
of the brave--no man suffered more keenly than this poor
harmless victim of the war. Jos could not bear the sight of
her pain. He left his sister in the charge of her stouter
female companion and descended once more to the threshold of
the hotel, where everybody still lingered, and talked, and
waited for more news."[25]

"_Yet the fact remains that the honey-bee is essentially a
wild creature, and never has been and cannot be thoroughly
domesticated._ Its proper home is the woods, and thither
every new swarm counts on going; and thither many do go in
spite of the care and watchfulness of the bee-keeper. If the
woods in any given locality are deficient in trees with
suitable cavities, the bees resort to all kinds of
makeshifts; they go into chimneys, into barns and outhouses,
under stones, into rocks, and so forth. Several chimneys in
my locality with disused flues are taken possession of by
colonies of bees nearly every season. One day, while
bee-hunting, I developed a line that went toward a farmhouse
where I had reason to believe no bees were kept. I followed
it up and questioned the farmer about his bees. He said he
kept no bees, but that a swarm had taken possession of his
chimney, and another had gone under the clapboards in the
gable end of his house. He had taken a large lot of honey
out of both places the year before. Another farmer told me
that one day his family had seen a number of bees examining
a knot-hole in the side of his house; the next day as they
were sitting down to dinner their attention was attracted by
a loud humming noise, when they discovered a swarm of bees
settling upon the side of the house and pouring into the
knot-hole. In subsequent years other swarms came to the same
place."[26]

"_It is important, therefore, to hold fast to this: that
poetry is at bottom a criticism of life;_ that the greatness
of a poet lies in his powerful and beautiful application of
ideas to life,--to the question: How to live. Morals are
often treated in a narrow and false fashion; they are bound
up with systems of thought and belief which have had their
day; they have fallen into the hands of pedants and
professional dealers; they grow tiresome to some of us. We
find attraction, at times, even in a poetry of revolt
against them; in a poetry which might take for its motto
Omar Khayyam's words: 'Let us make up in the tavern for the
time which we have wasted in the mosque.' Or we find
attractions in a poetry indifferent to them; in a poetry
where the contents may be what they will, but where the form
is studied and exquisite. We delude ourselves in either
case; and the best cure for our delusion is to let our minds
rest upon that great and inexhaustible word _life,_ until we
learn to enter into its meaning. A poetry of revolt against
moral ideas is a poetry of revolt against _life;_ a poetry
of indifference toward moral ideas is a poetry of
indifference toward _life._"[27]

"_The advantages arising from a system of copyright are
obvious._ It is desirable that we should have a supply of
good books: we cannot have such a supply unless men of
letters are liberally remunerated; and the least
objectionable way of remunerating them is by means of
copyright. You cannot depend for literary instruction and
amusement on the leisure of men occupied in the pursuits of
active life. Such men may occasionally produce compositions
of great merit. But you must not look to such men for works
which require deep meditation and long research. Works of
that kind you can expect only from persons who make
literature the business of their lives. Of these persons few
will be found among the rich and the noble. The rich and the
noble are not impelled to intellectual exertion by
necessity. They may be impelled to intellectual exertion by
the desire of distinguishing themselves, or by the desire of
benefiting the community. But it is generally within these
walls that they seek to signalize themselves and to serve
their fellow-creatures. Both their ambition and their public
spirit, in a country like this, naturally take a political
turn. It is then on men whose profession is literature, and
whose private means are not ample, that you must rely for a
supply of valuable books. Such men must be remunerated for
their literary labor. And there are only two ways in which
they can be remunerated. One of those ways is patronage; the
other is copyright."[28]

Frequently the topic-sentence is delayed until after the connection between what was said in the preceding paragraph and what will be said has been made. To establish this relation requires sometimes but a word or a short phrase, and sometimes sentences. In these cases the topic-sentence follows the transition, and it may come as late as the middle of the paragraph.

"The crows we have always with us, but it is not every day
or every season that one sees an eagle. _Hence I must
preserve the memory of one I saw the last day I went
bee-hunting._ As I was laboring up the side of a mountain at
the head of a valley, the noble bird sprang from the top of
a dry tree above me and came sailing directly over my head.
I saw him bend his eye down upon me, and I could hear the
low hum of his plumage, as if the web of every quill in his
great wings vibrated in his strong, level flight. I watched
him as long as my eye could hold him. When he was fairly
clear of the mountain he began that sweeping spiral movement
in which he climbs the sky. Up and up he went without once
breaking his majestic poise till he appeared to sight some
far-off alien geography, when he bent his course
thitherward, and gradually vanished in the blue depths. The
eagle is a bird of large ideas, he embraces long distances;
the continent is his home. I never look upon one without
emotion; I follow him with my eye as long as I can. I think
of Canada, of the Great Lakes, of the Rocky Mountains, of
the wild and sounding sea-coast. The waters are his, and the
woods and the inaccessible cliffs. He pierces behind the
veil of the storm, and his joy is height and depth and vast
spaces."[29]

"Now these insinuations and questions shall be answered in
their proper places; here I will but say that I scorn and
detest lying, and quibbling, and double-tongued practice,
and slyness, and cunning, and smoothness, and cant, and
pretence, quite as much as any Protestants hate them; and I
pray to be kept from the snare of them. But all this is just
now by the bye; _my present subject is my Accuser;_ what I
insist upon here is this unmanly attempt of his, in his
concluding pages, to cut the ground from under my feet;--to
poison by anticipation the public mind against me, John
Henry Newman, and to infuse into the imaginations of my
readers suspicion and mistrust of everything that I may say
in reply to him. This I call poisoning the wells."
("Apologia.")

In exposition and argument, and sometimes in the other forms of discourse, the topic-sentence may be at the end of the paragraph. This is for emphasis in narration and description. In exposition and argument it is better to lead up to an unwelcome truth than to announce it at once.

"Thus the matter of life, so far as we know it (and we have
no right to speculate on any other), breaks up, in
consequence of that continual death which is the condition
of its manifesting vitality, into carbonic acid, water, and
nitrogenous compounds which certainly possess no properties
but those of ordinary matter. And out of these same forms of
ordinary matter, and from none which are simpler, the
vegetable world builds up all the protoplasm which keeps the
animal world a-going. _Plants are the accumulators of the
power which animals distribute and disperse._"[30]

No Topic-Sentence.

Sometimes no topic-sentence appears in the paragraph. In such a case it is easily discovered; or at times it is too fragile to be compressed into any definite shape--a feeling, or a sentiment too delicate, too volatile for expression. A paragraph with no topic-sentence is most common in narration and description.

"The tide of color has ebbed from the upper sky. In the west
the sea of sunken fire draws back; and the stars leap forth,
and tremble, and retire before the advancing moon, who slips
the silver train of cloud from her shoulders, and, with her
foot upon the pine-tops, surveys heaven." ("Richard
Feverel," by George Meredith.)

The Plan.

Whether the topic form a part of the paragraph or not, it should be distinctly before the writer, and he should write upon the topic. Nothing contributes so much to the success of paragraphs as a definite treatment of one single topic. The paragraph is the development, the growth of this topic, as the plant is the development of its seed. Moreover, the development is according to a definite plan. The different steps are not usually laid out, as was done in the outline of a theme. Genung, in the "Practical Elements of Rhetoric," presents what he calls a typical form for a paragraph. It shows that a paragraph which is fully developed is in reality a miniature theme. It is as follows:--

The Subject proposed.

I. Whatever is needed to explain the subject.
Repetition.
Obverse.
Definition.
II. Whatever is needed to establish the subject.
Exemplification or detail.
Illustration.
Proof.
III. Whatever is needed to apply the subject.
Result or consequence.
Enforcement.
Summary or recapitulation.

Kinds of Paragraphs.

This typical form of a paragraph embodies all that paragraphs may do, and it is the logical arrangement. However, it is rare, perhaps it never occurs, that a paragraph is found having all these elements developed. The purpose determines which part of a paragraph should receive the amplification. If it be narrative or descriptive, there is no definition or proof; but the development by details will predominate. In an argument, definition and proof will form the large part of the paragraphs. Again, the position in the theme determines what kind of a paragraph should be used. In exposition the first paragraphs would be devoted to stating the proposition, and would therefore be largely given up to definition and repetition; the body would be especially paragraphs of detail and illustration; while the closing paragraph would be taken up with results and a summary. As one of the elements of a paragraph has been especially developed, paragraphs have been named paragraphs of repetition,[31] of the obverse, of details, of instances or examples, and of comparisons. Such a division is somewhat mechanical; but for purposes of study and for conscious practice in construction it has value.

Details.

The paragraph of details is by far the most common. It is found in all kinds of discourse. It originates from the fact that persons generally give the general truth first and follow this statement with the details or particulars. Whether the storyteller begins by saying, "Now I'll tell you just how they happened to be there;" or the traveler writes, "From the Place de la Concorde one has about him magnificent views," or "There were many unfortunate circumstances about the Dreyfus affair;" in each case he will follow the general statement of the opening sentence with sentences going into particulars or details.

_"All was now bustle and hubbub in the late quiet
schoolroom._ The scholars were hurried through their lessons
without stopping at trifles; those who were nimble skipped
over half with impunity, and those who were tardy had a
smart application now and then in the rear, to quicken their
speed or help them over a tall word. Books were flung aside
without being put away on the shelves, inkstands were
overturned, benches thrown down, and the whole school was
turned loose an hour before the usual time, bursting forth
like a legion of young imps, yelping and racketing about the
green in joy at their early emancipation."[32]

"It was toward evening that Ichabod arrived at the castle of
the Heer Van Tassel, _which he found thronged with the pride
and flower of the adjacent country._ Old farmers, a spare
leathern-faced race, in homespun coats and breeches, blue
stocking, huge shoes, and magnificent pewter buckles. Their
brisk, withered little dames, in close crimped caps,
long-waisted short-gowns, homespun petticoats, with scissors
and pincushions, and gay calico pockets hanging on the
outside. Buxom lasses, almost as antiquated as their
mothers, excepting where a straw hat, a fine ribbon, or
perhaps a white frock gave symptoms of city innovation. The
sons, in short square-skirted coats, with rows of stupendous
brass buttons, and their hair generally queued in the
fashion of the times, especially if they could procure an
eelskin for the purpose, it being esteemed throughout the
country as a potent nourisher and strengthener of the
hair."[32]

"The enemies of the Parliament, indeed, rarely choose to
take issue in the great points of the question. They content
themselves with exposing some of _the crimes and follies_ to
which public commotions necessarily give birth. They bewail
the unmerited fate of Strafford. They execrate the lawless
violence of the army. They laugh at the scriptural names of
the preachers. Major-generals fleecing their districts;
soldiers reveling on the spoils of a ruined peasantry;
upstarts, enriched by the public plunder, taking possession
of the hospitable firesides and hereditary trees of the old
gentry; boys smashing the beautiful windows of cathedrals;
Quakers riding naked through the market-place;
Fifth-monarchy men shouting for King Jesus; agitators
lecturing from the tops of tubs on the fate of Agag,--all
these, they tell us, were the offspring of the great
Rebellion."[33]

In narration and in a short paragraph of description this paragraph of details is frequently without a topic-sentence. The circumstances that make up a transaction are grouped, but there is no need of writing, "I will now detail this." In the following, since the paragraph is plainly about the preparation for the fight, it is unnecessary to say so. Such a patent statement would hinder the movement of the story.

"Alan drew a dirk, which he held in his left hand in case
they should run in under his sword. I, on my part, clambered
up into the berth with an armful of pistols and something of
a heavy heart, and set open the window where I was to watch.
It was a small part of the deck that I could overlook, but
enough for our purpose. The sea had gone down, and the wind
was steady and kept the sails quiet; so that there was a
great stillness on the ship, in which I made sure I heard
the sound of muttering voices. A little after, and there
came a clash of steel upon the deck, by which I knew they
were dealing out the cutlasses, and one had been let fall;
and after that silence again."[34]

Comparisons.

The paragraph of comparisons tells what a thing is like and what a thing is not like. It is much used in description and exposition. It is often the clearest way to describe an object or to explain a proposition. One thing may be likened to a number of things, drawing from each a quality that more definitely pictures it; or it may be compared with but one, and the likeness may be followed out to the limit of its value. In the same manner it is often of value to tell what a thing or a proposition does not resemble, to contrast it with one or more ideas, and by this means exclude what might otherwise be confusing. Note that after the negative comparison the paragraph closes with what it is like, or what it is.

From Macaulay's long comparison of the writings of Milton and Dante, one paragraph is enough to illustrate the use of contrast.

"Now let us _compare_ with the exact details of Dante the
dim intimations of Milton. We will cite a few examples. The
English poet has never thought of taking the measure of
Satan. He gives us merely a vague idea of vast bulk. In one
passage the fiend lies stretched out, huge in length,
floating many a rood, equal in size to the earth-born
enemies of Jove, or to the sea monster which the mariner
mistakes for an island. When he addresses himself to battle
against the guardian angels, he stands like Teneriffe or
Atlas; his stature reaches the sky. Contrast with these
descriptions the lines in which Dante has described the
gigantic spectre of Nimrod: 'His face seemed to me as long
and as broad as the ball of St. Peter's at Rome, and his
other limbs were in proportion; so that the bank, which
concealed him from the waist downwards, nevertheless showed
so much of him that three tall Germans would in vain have
attempted to reach to his hair.'" ("Essay on Milton.")

The following indicates the use of similarity.

"It is the character of such revolutions that we always see
the worst of them at first. Till men have been some time
free, they know not how to use their freedom. The natives of
wine countries are generally sober. In climates where wine
is a rarity intemperance abounds. A newly liberated people
may be _compared to_ a northern army encamped on the Rhine
or the Xeres. It is said that, when soldiers in such a
situation first find themselves able to indulge without
restraint in such a rare and expensive luxury, nothing is to
be seen but intoxication. Soon, however, plenty teaches
discretion, and, after wine has been for a few months their
daily fare, they become more temperate than they had ever
been in their own country. In the same manner, the final and
permanent fruits of liberty are wisdom, moderation, and
mercy. Its immediate effects are often atrocious crimes,
conflicting errors, skepticism on points the most clear,
dogmatism on points the most mysterious. It is just at this
crisis that its enemies love to exhibit it. They pull down
the scaffolding from the half-finished edifice; they point
to the flying dust, the falling bricks, the comfortless
rooms, the frightful irregularity of the whole appearance,
and then ask in scorn where the promised splendor and
comfort is to be found. If such miserable sophisms were to
prevail, there would never be a good house or a good
government in the world." ("Essay on Milton," by Lord
Macaulay.)

Repetition.

A third method of developing a paragraph from a topic-sentence is by repetition. Simply to repeat in other words would be useless redundancy; but so to repeat that with each repetition the thought broadens or deepens is valuable in proposing a subject or explaining it. No person has attained greater skill in repetition than Matthew Arnold, and much of his clearness comes from his repetition, often of the very same phrases.

"Wordsworth has been in his grave for some thirty years, and
certainly his lovers and admirers cannot flatter themselves
that this great and steady light of glory as yet shines over
him. He is not fully recognized at home; he is not
recognized at all abroad. Yet I firmly believe that the
poetical performance of Wordsworth is, after that of
Shakespeare and Milton, of which all the world now
recognizes the worth, undoubtedly the most considerable in
our language from the Elizabethan age to the present time.
Chaucer is anterior; and on other grounds, too, he cannot
well be brought into the comparison. But taking the roll of
our chief poetical names, besides Shakespeare and Milton,
from the age of Elizabeth downwards, and going through
it,--Spenser, Dryden, Pope, Gray, Goldsmith, Cowper, Burns,
Coleridge, Scott, Campbell, Moore, Byron, Shelley, Keats (I
mention those only who are dead),--I think it certain that
Wordsworth's name deserves to stand, and will finally stand,
above them all. Several of the poets named have gifts and
excellencies which Wordsworth has not. But taking the
performance of each as a whole, I say that Wordsworth seems
to me to have left a body of poetical work superior in
power, in interest, in the qualities which give enduring
freshness, to that which any one of the others has left."
("Essay on Wordsworth," by Matthew Arnold.)

"Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry,
without a certain unsoundness of mind, if anything which
gives so much pleasure ought to be called unsoundness. By
poetry we mean not all writing in verse, nor even all good
writing in verse. Our definition excludes many metrical
compositions which, on other grounds, deserve the highest
praise. By poetry, we mean the art of employing words in
such a manner as to produce an illusion on the imagination,
the art of doing by means of words what the painter does by
means of colors. Thus the greatest of the poets has
described it, in lines universally admired for the vigor and
felicity of their diction, and still more valuable on
account of the just notion which they convey of the art in
which he excelled:--

'As imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.'

These are the fruits of the 'fine frenzy' which he ascribes
to the poet,--a fine frenzy, doubtless, but still a frenzy.
Truth, indeed, is essential to poetry, but it is the truth
of madness. The reasonings are just, but the premises are
false. After the first suppositions have been made,
everything ought to be consistent; but those first
suppositions require a degree of credulity which almost
amounts to a partial and temporary derangement of the
intellect. Hence, of all people, children are the most
imaginative. They abandon themselves without reserve to
every illusion. Every image which is strongly presented to
their mental eye produces in them the effect of reality. No
man, whatever his sensibility may be, is ever affected by
Hamlet or Lear as a little girl is affected by the story of
poor Red Riding Hood. She knows it is all false, that wolves
cannot speak, that there are no wolves in England. Yet in
spite of her knowledge she believes; she weeps; she
trembles; she dares not go into a dark room lest she should
feel the teeth of the monster at her throat. Such is the
despotism of the imagination over uncultivated minds."
("Essay on Milton," by Macaulay.)

Obverse.

A fourth method of building up a paragraph from a topic-sentence consists in telling what it is not; that is, giving the obverse. This is very effective in argument, and is employed in exposition and description. The obverse usually follows a positive statement, and again is followed by the affirmative; that is, first what it is, then what it is not, and last, what it is again. In the following description by Ruskin, the method appears and reappears. Notice the "nots" and "buts," indicating the change from the negative to the positive statement. It would be a sacrilege to omit the last paragraph, though it does not illustrate this manner of development.

"For all other rivers there is a surface, and an underneath,
and a vaguely displeasing idea of the bottom. But the Rhone
flows like one lambent jewel; its surface is nowhere, its
ethereal self is everywhere, the iridescent rush and
translucent strength of it blue to the shore, and radiant to
the depth.

"Fifteen feet thick, not of flowing, but flying water; not
water, neither--melted glacier, rather, one should call it;
the force of the ice is with it, and the wreathing of the
clouds, the gladness of the sky, and the continuance of
Time.

"Waves of clear sea are, indeed, lovely to watch, but they
are always coming or gone, never in any taken shape to be
seen for a second. But here was one mighty wave that was
always itself, and every fluted swirl of it, constant as the
wreathing of a shell. No wasting away of the fallen foam, no
pause for gathering of power, no helpless ebb of discouraged
recoil; but alike through bright day and lulling night, the
never-pausing plunge, and never-fading flash, and
never-hushing whisper, and, while the sun was up, the
ever-answering glow of unearthly aquamarine, ultramarine,
violet-blue, gentian-blue, peacock-blue, river-of-paradise
blue, glass of a painted window melted in the sun, and the
witch of the Alps flinging the spun tresses of it forever
from her snow.

"The innocent way, too, in which the river used to stop to
look into every little corner. Great torrents always seem
angry, and great rivers are often too sullen; but there is
no anger, no disdain in the Rhone. It seemed as if the
mountain stream was in mere bliss at recovering itself again
out of the lake-sleep, and raced because it rejoiced in
racing, fain yet to return and stay. There were pieces of
wave that danced all day, as if Perdita were looking on to
learn; there were little streams that skipped like lambs and
leaped like chamois; there were pools that shook the
sunshine all through them, and were rippled in layers of
overlaid ripples, like crystal sand; there were currents
that twisted the light into golden braids, and inlaid the
threads with turquoise enamel; there were strips of stream
that had certainly above the lake been mill-stream, and were
looking busily for mills to turn again; and there were
shoots of stream that had once shot fearfully into the air,
and now sprang up again, laughing, that they had only fallen
a foot or two;--and in the midst of all the gay glittering
and eddied lingering, the noble bearing by of the midmost
depth, so mighty, yet so terrorless and harmless, with its
swallows skimming in spite of petrels, and the dear old
decrepit town as safe in the embracing sweep of it as if it
were set in a brooch of sapphires."[35]

This extract from Burke's speech is a good example of the same method.

"I put this consideration of the present and the growing
numbers in the front of our deliberation, because, Sir, this
consideration will make it evident to a blunter discernment
than yours, that _no_ partial, narrow, contracted, pinched,
occasional system will be at all suitable to such an object.
It will show you that it is _not_ to be considered as one of
those _minima_ which are out of the eye and consideration of
the law; _not_ a paltry excrescence of the state; _not_ a
mean dependent, who may be neglected with little damage and
provoked with little danger. It will prove that some degree
of care and caution is required in the handling such an
object; it will show that you ought not, in reason, to
trifle with so large a mass of the interests and feelings of
the human race. You could at no time do so without guilt;
and be assured you will not be able to do it long with
impunity."[36]

Examples.

A fifth method of expanding a topic is by means of illustrations and examples. It is used largely in establishing or enforcing a proposition. The author selects one example, or perhaps more than one, to illustrate his proposition. Note the words that may introduce specific instances: _for example, for instance, to illustrate, a case in point,_ and so forth.

In the first of the following quotations, Cardinal Newman is showing that simply to acquire is not true mental enlargement. The paragraph is made up of a series of instances. The second paragraph is by Macaulay.

"The _case is the same still more strikingly when_ the
persons in question are beyond dispute men of inferior
powers and deficient education. Perhaps they have been much
in foreign countries, and they receive, in a passive,
otiose, unfruitful way, the various facts which are forced
upon them there. Seafaring men, _for example,_ range from
one end of the earth to the other; but the multiplicity of
external objects which they have encountered forms no
symmetrical and consistent picture upon their imagination;
they see the tapestry of human life, as it were, on the
wrong side, and it tells no story. They sleep, and they rise
up, and they find themselves, now in Europe, now in Asia;
they see visions of great cities and wild regions; they are
in the marts of commerce, or amid the islands of the South;
they gaze on Pompey's Pillar, or on the Andes; and nothing
which meets them carries them forward or backward, to any
idea beyond itself. Nothing has a drift or relation; nothing
has a history or a promise. Everything stands by itself and
comes and goes in its turn, like the shifting scenes of a
show, which leave the spectator where he was. Perhaps you
are near such a man on a particular occasion, and expect him
to be shocked or perplexed at something which occurs; but
one thing is much the same to him as another; or, if he is
perplexed, it is as not knowing what to say, whether it is
right to admire, or to ridicule, or to disapprove, while
conscious that some expression of opinion is expected from
him; for in fact he has no standard of judgment at all, and
no landmarks to guide him to a conclusion. Such is mere
acquisition, and, I repeat, no one would dream of calling it
philosophy." ("Idea of a University," by Cardinal Newman.)

"I will give _another instance._ One of the most
instructive, interesting, and delightful books in our
language is Boswell's 'Life of Johnson.' Now it is well
known that Boswell's eldest son considered this book,
considered the whole relation of Boswell to Johnson, as a
blot in the escutcheon of the family. He thought, not
perhaps altogether without reason, that his father had
exhibited himself in a ludicrous and degrading light. And
thus he became so sore and irritable that at last he could
not bear to hear the 'Life of Johnson' mentioned. Suppose
that the law had been what my honorable and learned friend
wishes to make it. Suppose that the copyright of Boswell's
'Life of Johnson' had belonged, as it well might, during
sixty years, to Boswell's eldest son. What would have been
the consequence? An unadulterated copy of the finest
biographical work in the world would have been as scarce as
the first edition of Camden's 'Britannia.'" (Speech,
"Copyright," by Macaulay.)

Combines Two or More Forms.

As was said at the beginning, a paragraph is seldom made exclusively of one form. One part of the typical paragraph is usually developed more than any other and gives to the paragraph its character and its name. By far the most common variety of paragraph is that which combines two or more of the other forms. It is not necessary to cite examples; they are everywhere. Though combination is the commonest method of development, it should be guarded. It is a poor paragraph that combines the forms indiscriminately. It should follow some plan; and the best plan is the one already given in the typical paragraph.

All paragraphs, whatever be the special method of development, are governed by the three principles which have guided in the structure of whole compositions. Whether the purpose be to prove or to narrate, to enforce a conclusion or to illustrate, if a paragraph is to produce its greatest effect, it should have unity, it should be well massed, and it should be coherent.

It is not necessary now to define unity in a paragraph; the need is rather to notice the offenses against it that frequently occur. They are manifestly two: too much may be included, and not all may be included. The accompanying circumstance of the one, not necessarily the cause, however, is often a very long paragraph, and of the other a short paragraph.

Unity.

Violations of the unity of a paragraph most frequently result from including more than belongs there. The theme has been selected; it is narrow and concise. When one begins to write, many things crowd in pell-mell. Impressions, which come and go, we hardly know how or why, are the only products of most minds. Impressions, not shaped and logical thoughts, make up the mixed confusion frequently called a theme. The writer puts down enough of these impressions to make a paragraph, and then goes on to do it again, fancying that so he is really paragraphing. Even should he keep within the limits of his theme, he cannot in this way paragraph. As everything upon a subject does not belong in a theme, so everything in a theme may not be introduced indiscriminately into any paragraph.

The other danger lies in the short paragraph. It does not allow a writer room to say all he has to say upon the topic, so it runs over into the next paragraph. All of the thought-paragraph should appear in one division on the page. This error is not so common as the former. Examples of each are to be found on pages 152-157.

Need of Outline.

The remedy for this confusion clearly is hard thinking; and a great assistance is the outline. Before a word is written, think through the theme; get clearly the purpose of each paragraph in the development of the whole. Then write just what the paragraph was intended to include, and no more. More will be suggested because the parts of a whole theme are all closely related, but that more belongs somewhere else. Make a sharp outline, and follow it.

Mass.

A paragraph should be so arranged that the parts which arrest the eye will be important.[37] When a person glances down a page, his eye rests upon the beginning and the end of each paragraph. A reader going rapidly through an article to get what he wants of it does not read religiously every word; he knows that he will be directed to the contents of each paragraph by the first and last sentences. If a writer considers his readers, if he desires to arrange his paragraph so that it will be most effective, he will have at these points such sentences as will accurately indicate its contents and the trend of the discussion; and he will form these sentences so well that they will deserve the attention which is given them by reason of their position in the paragraph.

What begins and what ends a Paragraph?

What are the words that deserve the distinction of opening and closing a paragraph? As in the theme, so in a paragraph, the first thing is to announce the subject of discussion. When the subject is simply announced without giving any indication as to the drift of the discussion, the conclusion of the discussion is generally stated in the last sentence. Burke says, "The first thing we have to consider with regard to the nature of the object is the number of people in the colonies." He concludes the paragraph with, "Whilst we are discussing any given magnitude, they are grown to it. Whilst we spend our time in deliberating on the mode of governing two millions, we shall find we have millions more to manage. Your children do not grow faster from infancy to manhood than they spread from families to communities, and from villages to nations." In other cases the opening sentence states the conclusion at which the paragraph will arrive. Then the closing sentence may be a repetition of the opening or topic sentence; or it may be one of the points used to exemplify or establish the proposition which opens the paragraph. Again, in a short paragraph the topic need not be announced at the beginning; in this case it should be given in the concluding sentence. Or, should the topic be given in the opening sentence of a short paragraph, it is unnecessary to repeat it at the end. In any case, whether the paragraph opens with a simple announcement of the topic to be discussed, or with the conclusion which the paragraph aims to explain, establish, or illustrate, or whether it closes with the conclusion of the whole matter, or with one of the main points in the development, the sentences at the beginning and the end of a paragraph should be strong sentences worthy of their distinguished position.

In the first paragraph below, there is a proposition in the first sentence and its repetition in the last. In the two following, though they close with no general statement, the specific assertions used to substantiate and illustrate the first sentences are strong and carry in themselves the truth of the topic-sentence.

"The eloquence of Mr. Adams resembled his general character,
and formed, indeed, a part of it. It was bold, manly, and
energetic; and such the crisis required. When public bodies
are to be addressed on momentous occasions, when great
interests are at stake, and strong passions excited, nothing
is valuable in speech farther than as it is connected with
high intellectual and moral endowments. Clearness, force,
and earnestness are the qualities which produce conviction.
True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It
cannot be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for
it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be
marshaled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must
exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion.
Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of
declamation, all may aspire to it; they cannot reach it. It
comes, if it come at all, like the outbreaking of a fountain
from the earth, or the bursting forth of volcanic fires,
with spontaneous, original, native force. The graces taught
in the schools, the costly ornaments and studied
contrivances of speech, shock and disgust men when their own
lives and the fate of their wives, their children, and their
country hang on the decision of the hour. Then words have
lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and all elaborate
oratory contemptible. Even genius itself then feels rebuked
and subdued, as in the presence of higher qualities. Then
patriotism is eloquent; then self-devotion is eloquent. The
clear conception, outrunning the deductions of logic, the
high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit,
speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing
every feature, and urging the whole man onward, right onward
to his object--this, this is eloquence: or rather it is
something greater and higher than all eloquence; it is
action, noble, sublime, godlike action."[38]